Last I recall, the best way to start a campfire without paper is with dry kindle made up of dry pine needles, leaves and small twigs from dead trees and foliage.

Either, you stacked your twigs cross wise or arranged them like a teepee so the dry kindle or tinder set beneath could burn sending the fire up this miniature ladder until you added larger dry limbs, and chopped logs to burn. The perfect campfire is made in less than 10 minutes.

In recent times, over the last 164 years or so, Anglos settled the West suppressing fire to protect their towns and cities from destruction all to fuel the economic engine of growth. All the while, the forests have grown thicker and stronger as we have built our homes and cities closer to and amongst them. As nature would have it through the seasons of time, the trees and bushes shed their needles and leaves then died littering the forest floor with tree trunks, branches and twigs to wrought creating a rich nutrient soil and adding layer upon layer of dry kindle and tinder to it. The dry kindle and tinder are well known to modern day wild-land firefighters as ladder fuels.

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The mountain pine beetle has come and gone through the centuries and ions of time, but never have they proliferated more the last two to three decades. Except say during the dry years of the 1930s and early 1940s commonly known as the Dust Bowl Era.

During that time, here in the Flat Tops Wilderness of Colorado it is easily observed the pine beetle significantly devastated the lodge pole pine forest and the forest was later burned through large natural fires aided by lightning strikes even as late as the early 2000s. The epidemic of the mountain pine beetle through recent warming trends without natural abatement via hard freezes below zero degrees over the course 40 days or more and with winter seasons decreasing in length has added significantly to the ladder fuels in all Colorado forests.

It stands to reason, these ladder fuels allowed to accumulate on an accelerated rate on forest floors due to climate change and warming trends are the tinder and kindling for the sizeable raging wild land forest fires burning in Colorado today. Like the camper's camp fire it takes only the flash point of a match for a forest fire to start when lightning strikes, a controlled burn runs wild or a spark from an existing fire blown on a breeze catches some dry tinder on the forest floor.

The direct correlation between added beetle-kill ladder fuels to the forest floor due to global warming are the single key variable in the size and frequency of the wild land forest fires we experience today. So what is all the ta do about scientific studies to prove whether this fact is true or not? I await the results of these studies with baited breath.

The Boulder alt-country band gives its EPs names such as Death and Resurrection, and its songs bear the mark of hard truths and sin. But the punk energy behind the playing, and the sense that it's all in good fun, make it OK to dance to a song like "Death." Full Story